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McGruber writes "The NY Times has the news that federal judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who ruled in 2000 that Microsoft was a predatory monopoly and must be split in half, has died. He was 76 years old. 'A technological novice who wrote his opinions in longhand and used his computer mainly to e-mail jokes, Judge Jackson refuted Microsoft's assertion that it was impossible to remove the company's Internet Explorer Web browser from its operating system by doing it himself. When a Microsoft lawyer complained that too many excerpts from Bill Gates's videotaped deposition — liberally punctuated with the phrase "I don't remember" — were shown in the courtroom, Judge Jackson said, "I think the problem is with your witness, not the way his testimony is being presented."'"

Same reason they threatened Intel not to develop a Java VM and made their own Java incompatible with Sun. MS didn't want any competition from anyone. Whether or not the threat was credible, they were going to stomp it out.

It was part of their "Embrace and Extend" strategy. Embrace any popular technology by making your own free version, then extend it in a way that's incompatible with other operating systems or office software, thus creating a lock-in and even greater dependency on the core products - OS and Office.

It was about marketing. Microsoft controlled the default home page of anyone who used IE. This in turn helped promote their monopoly and push away competition.

They also knew that controlling standard document formats (in this case, HTML; also, see Office) meant that others would always be judged against Microsoft's offering, placing Microsoft on a pedestal. No wonder IE didn't conform to the actual HTML standards until Microsoft no longer held the de facto standard.

You have to realize that at the time Microsoft Windows had something like 95%+ market share in the home and small to medium sized business market. This has declined in more recent years due both to the rising popularity of Apple and Google and the shift towards smaller and more mobile computing devices, like tablets and smartphones, amongst consumers. However, at that time there were few viable alternatives to the Wintel monopoly for consumers and anything that could threaten sales of Windows or Microsoft O

It was probably something as petty as not wanting to pay royalties to spyglass for it since it was included as a "free" extra instead of it being considered a portion of the MS Windows customers paid for.

Microsoft foresaw (correctly) that eventually the OS would become irrelevant, and the web would become the platform. Control the majority of the web browser platform and you can control that market. Thus, focus on IE in an attempt to gain market share and thus, developers. Once the developers are focused on writing for IE, they are more likely to use other MS technologies on the server end to match.

This is exactly why we have a huge number of enterprises still screwing around with IE6.

"Microsoft foresaw (correctly) that eventually the OS would become irrelevant, and the web would become the platform. "

That has to be the absolute most ridiculous line I have read on Slashdot in as long as I can remember. In other news, in new cars engines are irrelevant these days, and the freeway is now the platform! Also, Bill Gates foresaw the 9/11 Attacks! That's why he wasn't at the pentagon or in NYC that day!

Irrelevant doesn't mean "not required". As in, it doesn't matter if it is Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, Amiga, or some other platform we don't even know about yet. The platform applications are developed for is higher level than that now.

" As in, it doesn't matter if it is Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, Amiga, or some other platform we don't even know about yet. The platform applications are developed for is higher level than that now."

Put down the meth pipe. Seriously. I have more than 100 applications on my PC that I use with more or less frequency. I use exactly 0 applications on your fictional "higher level" (unless you count the "Slashdot App", as I suppose you would call it.) And even in cases where the Web is a major part of the a

The initial IE was purchased from Spyglass for a small sum plus royalties on sales. Needless to say they were screwed. When Microsoft later claimed it was an integral part of the operating system, Spyglass claimed the royalty on a basis of Microsoft's Windows sales. This was settled out of court, but some damn fine cars were seen driving the roads of Naperville, Illinois, soon thereafter.

I never understood why Microsoft forced Internet Explorer inside Windows. Did they fear Netscape's "API" would really threaten them ?

It's funny how Windows 98 Second Edition had this feature, Active Desktop, which allowed for the display of web content (plug-ins and all) directly onto the desktop background, and also supported native XML feeds (CDF)... and today everybody's going ga-ga over HTML5-based "apps" which run "native" to their mobile operating environment with the ability of utilizing an API -- XmlHttpRequest, developed by Microsoft Office team for their Outlook Web Access UI back in Exchange Server 5 days.

"Yeah, clearly Microsoft had no idea that web-based content would be fetched for display in an OS... and that the renderer has best performance and security capabilities if it were baked into the OS instead of being bolted on."

You have absolutely no idea how to develop software. Rest assured that putting browser code in kernel space is the single most stupid thing you could do with a modern OS. It buys you nothing significant in terms of performance, and makes you far less secure. Of course, that point i

I'll assume that your ability to comprehend what you read parallels your development skillz. Your entire post was nothing but a red herring designed to make it sound like you have an understanding of software systems, but it actually shows clearly how clueless you actually are.

"Being a neophyte, the Judge clearly did NOT prove that he both removed the "offending" feature AND maintained complete commercial software compatibility across the entire Windows ecosystem by all previously-Certified-for-Windows app

ROTFLMAO. I just re-read your post in its entirety. The fact that you think testing 1000s of applications and all their interactions is a trivial task made me almost destroy my keyboard from spitting out the soda I was drinking I laughed so hard.

Suffice it to say that I was writing Device Drivers before you ever saw a computer and Windows Device Drivers before you knew what a device driver was..

Which means you have 0 skills as a programmer and a negative skills as a developer. You are the worst kind of coder -- an engineer. You think that code is there to do stuff. It's not. It's there to tell what it does. And you are very,very,very,very likely a very poor story teller. There is virtually no difference in entropy between the code you write and the compiled code that comes out of what you write. You produce negative information because people learn nothing from reading what you write. Engi

I never understood why Microsoft forced Internet Explorer inside Windows. Did they fear Netscape's "API" would really threaten them ?

Yes that is exactly what they feared. Microsoft is the company that has a product for every (computer related) need. Just look at what you get in an MSDN Universal Subscription.

Those subscriptions are very popular most software development, web development and IT support shops have a universal subscription. So if some new job comes up you already have the tool to do it in the MSDN CD folder and you've already read all about it in MSDN Magazine and heard about it at Technet conferences and all the books you

1) They were aware that if they could make Internet Explorer the window to the web, they could own the web.
2) They realized that the browser would become a platform for application programming, which would mean that people no longer would be locked in to Windows as a platform.

actually notepad is a pretty good example of why this practice sucks, most people put up with that piece of shit because it came free with the operating system rather than finding something that's actually good.

Yes, they did. They were such control freaks that they couldn't stand the thought that a web based app might run equally well on Linux or Mac. The only out was to corrupt the standards enough that corporate apps would be IE only.

They created such a lockdown that even with MS helping, their customers have taken years to even move to the next version of IE.

I never understood why Microsoft forced Internet Explorer inside Windows. Did they fear Netscape's "API" would really threaten them ?

Yes. Netscape was proposing a network connected API that would act as an interface between the program and the OS. It was going to be a complete API that would allow a developer to write a program that would run on the Netscape API and be OS independent.

I think they saw the browser as being an application platform in the future before others saw that. Not necessarily because they wanted internet based applications but because they wanted to make sure those application users were still using Windows. If the entire world could use Netscape or something else to get their work done then there'd be no reason to use Windows anymore. So they needed to make sure that they were in the browser market, that they had a very large market share of it, and then chang

"Microsoft was made clawing its way to the top. It had to claw over IBM. It had to claw over Borland or maybe it was Broderbund with the TurboBASIC suite (?). And Microsoft had to claw over Apple and Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect and Novell DOS."

As in CLAW you mean, kill them with deceit and trickery? yes.

I suggest you actually read up on the reality that is the rise of Microsoft and how Bill Gates was the biggest back stabber there was in the tech sector.

Microsoft isn't in decline, however much people like you and I would like to imagine them to be. Microsoft is in its prime as the premier desktop operating system and Windows 7 established this in granite. Windows 8 has hairballs, but they are in a position where they can make a mistake or 2 and be trusted to correct it and the market will forgive them for this faux pas. The alternatives to Windows offer no stability advantages --- Linux is far from "write once, works 3 years from now" and neither is OS X. You'll find greater stability in running a Windows app via WINE that you will a native OS X or Linux app several years down the road.

Don't shoot me --- I'm not even a messenger --- sure Windows isn't going to penetrate the mobile or even tablet market simply because they are clueless and in identity crissi, but they will own the desktop market for at least a decade or 2 and it could be more than that.

Linux is far from "write once, works 3 years from now" and neither is OS X. You'll find greater stability in running a Windows app via WINE that you will a native OS X or Linux app several years down the road.

Ok, that's just total nonsense. Microsoft operating system and applications are, simply put, not known for their stability. I can't even imagine you typing that with a straight face.

Microsoft isn't in decline, however much people like you and I would like to imagine them to be.

Yeah, sure. They just haven't been able to break into the mobile device market while that market is in the process of devouring their core business. No big deal, right?

Ok, that's just total nonsense. Microsoft operating system and applications are, simply put, not known for their stability. I can't even imagine you typing that with a straight face.

Microsoft (or at least Raymond Chen and his colleagues) seem to go to huge lengths [msdn.com] to make the APIs in their operating systems extremely stable, from a compatibility point of view. Which I believe is what the grandparent was referring to when he said "write once, works 3 years from now."

" It wasn't that long ago at work that we still had applications that still used 8.3 filenames on XP...... About the only way you could do that on Linux would be with static linking."

You are kidding, right? You can use 8.3 file names all day long on Linux. You always could. No change required.

Uh, you missed the point. An application on Windows only is limited to 8.3 filenames if it is still using the old 16-bit (yes, 16) API of windows v3. That's an API that was 15 years old at that time.

15 years ago from today was 1998. Just try running an ELF (I assume ELF was standard by then) built under gcc v2.8.0 against glibc v2.0.6 on a modern distro. I wouldn't be surprised if you had issue if it was ONLY linked against glibc, let alone against the common toolsets of the time.

About the only way you could do that on Linux would be with static linking.

Or including the source and a compiler.

And this is why Linux tends not to have stable APIs, but it isn't really a solution most software vendors would embrace. It also isn't a magic bullet - ever try running complex code written for a 5-year-old version of GCC against a modern version? If you're talking about hello world there will be no issues, but go nuts with c++ features and there is a good chance it won't build.

You obviously know nothing at all about Linux or computers in general. There are a TON of linux computers that were written once 3-5 years ago and still works great. The first Sony BluRay players, yup those run linux and they are over 3 years old and are running perfectly. Most Panasonic TV sets from 2005-now run Linux and the earlier sets never had a path for software upgrade so they are ALSO running perfectly 3+ years from when it was released.

I also know of servers that are out there that are running Linux from a decade ago. I have one that is 100% impossible to hack and is running a 2.2.x Linux kernel. It's at the top of a 120 foot tower and is acting as an APRS relay/Packet BBS and has been for well over 10 years now.

He was talking about "business apps" - you know VBScripted Excel documents and Access database backed GUIs authored in Visual Studio. There probably are a ton of them out there - it's like as if everyone had written apps in AppleScript and HyperCard and backed it with FileMaker.

I do like the fact that Microsoft jumped through such hoops to get vendor lock-in, that all these years later it bit them in the butt because corporations are hanging on to XP simply because of non-standards compliant IE 6...which they tied to the OS. Hahahaha.

The real obstacle to Microsoft on the desktop over the next few decades is not Linux or OS X, it is prior versions of Windows that had some feature that won't work in a new version. Again, Hahahaha.

You'll find greater stability in running a Windows app via WINE that you will a native OS X or Linux app several years down the road.

bollocks. Link to a specific version of a library, all the way down to the teeny version, and your app will still work several years down the road if the dependencies can be scrounged up. It will require multiple versions of the same library installed on your system, but since Unix permits that, this is not even a problem; it just costs you a little disk space.

Technological novice or not he had a better handle on the definition of "operating system" than many of the readers here. A solitaire game or web browser is not part of the computer operating system but instead just an application that comes with it. Rely on textbook definitions and not MS marketing or RMS seeing an opportunity to claim credit for a different project.

Part of this might be that the terminology hasn't really kept up with the realities of the situation. Initially an Operating System was literately just the software layer that operated the hardware. But right from the very start there were useful apps and commands baked in that were not strictly required for interfacing with the hardware. And as more and more things got taken for granted as part of the basic computing experience, they got added to the basic level of computer installation, which is the OS.

Technological novice or not he had a better handle on the definition of "operating system" than many of the readers here. A solitaire game or web browser is not part of the computer operating system but instead just an application that comes with it. Rely on textbook definitions and not MS marketing.

Users have never been interested in the geek's textbook definitions.

They are shopping for systems. They like consistency. In-store demos. The out-of-the-box experience. Core applications which share a common look and feel with the desktop or mobile UI. Bare bones doesn't sell worth spit.

So? The beige box under the desk is not a "hard drive" no matter what the lowest common denominator says.Similarly I don't see why we should accept the MS marketing department definition of an operating system over the textbook one - yet so many have.

If you take a tablet or smartphone today and try to say a web browser is not a part of the OS, you would get the same funny look as if you said the scheduler is not a part of a Unix system.

A web browser is not a part of the OS. There, I've said it, and it's true. On my Android phone, I can just delete the Browser.apk file and the web browser is gone, and nothing else on the phone will be affected.

You can do the same on an iphone if you jailbrake it, which is the same as rooting your android phone. So the Browser is not apart of the OS, and only microsoft was retarded enough to use it as the file manager inside the OS.

You can do the same on an iphone if you jailbrake it, which is the same as rooting your android phone. So the Browser is not apart of the OS, and only microsoft was retarded enough to use it as the file manager inside the OS.

And technically, the file manager isn't part of the OS, either, except in the sense of (typically) being bundled with the OS. I worked for several years with people who were hung up on Norton Commander for their file manager.

IE on the other hand (squeaky Steve Ballmer voice) "is an Integral part of the Windows operating system".

He showed bias before the final judgement, and the ruling was nullified. It was the last best chance to break the back of the beast. Instead, we have had to put up with them for these last 13 years. They lied, cheated and stole their way to market domination. There are *hundreds* of companies and *thousands* of people they cheated and stole from. Not just Borland and Stac Electronics and IBM and DrDos and Broderbund. Not just FoxSoft and Adobe, hundreds of others.

To be fair to the judge, he was the victim of a focused smear campaingn by MS. MS was fighting for its life and did not scruple at using every dirty trick it could.

MS complained [bbc.co.uk] about several interviews that Judge Jackson gave with journalists, in which the judge uttered some blunt and unflattering comments about Microsoft and its icon, Bill Gates. The judge said that Gates had a Napoleon complex, that Gates's "testimony is inherently without credibility," and he likened Microsoft's behavior to that of street gangs and drug dealers.

However, the judge's interviews and comments were made after he had heard all the evidence and the cases were closed. He decided that MS was not telling the truth, and that was his job. His only mistake was in granting the interviews before he issued his final judgment.

The judge was careless, certainly, but his decision should have been allowed to stand.

Right, except for their licensing agreements whereby Siri in iOS 7 will be supported by Bing, whereby Facebook is in bed with Microsoft tech (although not a fully committed marriage), and consumers are still buying Xboxes by the hundreds of thousands globally every month... and their Windows Azure platform is already a billion-dollar business (their 15th?), and they've sold more than $1B worth of Surface devices... and everyone still wants their software to be supported on other OSes (e.g. Office for iOS)..

Hate to rain on your parade, but MS will remain very viable in the near future. They may be suffering a loss of mindshare, but the profits are still rolling in and are likely to keep rolling in for the future.

While sales of Win8 is slow, a majority of desktops still sport a variant of WinX as their OS. At some point, it is a certainty their users will want to upgrade and there is no significant competition for WinX right now. Both Lunux and iOS are relatively niche products.

Judge Jackson put up with all kinds of crap during the antitrust trial that would have garnered normal people punishment for contempt of court. One of the more ridiculous examples was when Microsoft execs presented a forged video [washingtonpost.com] as evidence in the trial. Not only was the video doctored, it was doctored in a bad, amateurish manner, just like their software. Even at the time it was a puzzle why that went unpunished. Now we can see that was just standard operating procedures for M$.

"The judge had a lively sense of humor. The Washington Post reported that he once told of a law professor, an appellate judge and a trial judge who went duck hunting. When a bird flew over, the law professor referred to a textbook. By the time he looked up, the duck was gone. When a second bird appeared, the appellate judge studied relevant precedents, and the same thing happened.

The trial judge had no scholarly compunctions when a third bird flew into rang

Perhaps so, but forcibly splitting companies up into separate companies based on their product lines may not really be something we want government doing, regardless of any efficiency improvements it might bring? I don't think arguing about such forced reorganization making products "better" is a very valid reasons for using the force of Federal law against a business.

Looking back on the whole issue, I think an awful lot of people's dislike for Microsoft's products drives them to support the claim that the

The idea the browser could not be separated was a fraud. Microsoft had just gotten done spending years developing and pushing its COM interface technology, and IBrowser was its flagship plug-and-play example. Anybody should have been able to slap a different browser in there.

Whether the company should be "forbidden" from including a browser is a sepsrate issue. Security problems with IE (drive-by web page view hijackings, for example) probably did more to drive people to non-IE browsers than any judicial

The last MacOSX update (10.8) killed my Office 2001 install, I tried to update with 2010 (I think it was that version) and it failed to install - didn't recognise the license key that came with the CD, when I tried calling the MS support number you had to enter your install code to get support - and guess what - it wouldn't recognise the key and there was no way to talk to a person through the menu system without a code. So at home at least, MS Office is dead to me.

"MS was/is in the 90 percent range of the OS market share and Apple was/is still only in the single digit market share."

In what market? The crux of the problem is that Microsoft used it's operating system monopoly to push into the browser market.

But is this really any different than Apple using it's digital music player (iPod) or digital music store (iTunes) monopolies that were in the 90% marketshare range to push into the Smartphone and digital video and eBooks markets?

But is this really any different than Apple using it's digital music player (iPod) or digital music store (iTunes) monopolies that were in the 90% marketshare range to push into the Smartphone and digital video and eBooks markets?

A main differences are that you don't have to use any or all of Apple's ecosystem. You want a digital music player that's not Apple; buy someone else. You want music that's not iTunes; buy someone else. You want some OS other than Windows when you buy a PC from Dell, HP, IBM, etc; No.

I think there's a fair point to be made that Apple has definitely leveraged monopolies it has had to enter new markets in exactly the same way Microsoft leveraged it's operating system monopoly to try and take browser marketshare.

Not exactly the same unless you have proof that Apple interfered with Amazon or Google or Microsoft when they set up their music stores. Or that they tried to block Sansa, Archos, etc from making or selling their music players. Or that they prevented Nokia, Motorola, Sony, from setting up their own music stores; incidentally I had a Verizon music store on my dumb Verizon Motorola way before iTunes/iPhone. It was $4 a track and I could not play the track outside of my phone.

This has become pretty prominent with eBooks in that they are being investigated for illegal market manipulation, but this isn't the same as anti-trust legislation used against Microsoft. In fact, one might argue that if Apple had been properly and correctly investigated for anti-trust violations it may not have ever engaged in eBook price fixing that led to increased eBook prices for consumers in the first place.

Are you implying that MS was improperly investigated?

I really don't think there's a reasonable argument that Apple is somehow different from Microsoft, it clearly has had monopolies in some markets, and it clearly has leveraged those monopolies to gain advantages in others, sometimes abusively so.

The problem is "absusive". Monopolies can exist; where companies like MS were sued was how they treated partners and competitors. It isn't abusive to offer an advantage like vertical integration. If MS had simply packaged IE with Windows that might have been okay. Threatening OEMs that MS would raise their prices if they installed Netscape was abusive. Working with Intel to undermine Netscape was abusive.

"A main differences are that you don't have to use any or all of Apple's ecosystem. You want a digital music player that's not Apple; buy someone else. You want music that's not iTunes; buy someone else. You want some OS other than Windows when you buy a PC from Dell, HP, IBM, etc; No."

That argument doesn't make sense because Linux, Unix, OS/2 and Mac OS were all available as alternatives during the anti-trust investigation. Microsoft having 90% of the market didn't change the fact 10% was comprised of alte

That argument doesn't make sense because Linux, Unix, OS/2 and Mac OS were all available as alternatives during the anti-trust investigation.

I take it that you didn't read the findings of fact. Judge Jackson addressed this point. Back when MS was sued could a consumer get an OS other than Windows when buying a x86 PC from an OEM? No. They could buy an Apple which wasn't x86. The court case was always about consumers being harmed when it came to x86 PCs.

Microsoft having 90% of the market didn't change the fact 10% was comprised of alternatives, just as Apple having 90% of the portable media player market didn't change the fact 10% was comprised of alternatives.

The problem isn't just market share. Before a company is legally defined as having a monopoly there is a 3 part test. 1) Does the company have a high enough market share to control the mark

Wow you missed the whole point: other than Apple making decisions about their own products. iPhone is Apple's product. They had serious concerns about using Flash on their product. Can you dispute that battery life, security, and stability were not real concerns? Can you proof to anyone that Apple interfered with Flash in other ways like going to Intel and asking them not to work with Adobe?

As for eBooks, you didn't read above did you? Apple says one thing; the DoJ says another. My understanding is t

I gave you a list of cases where Apple was found guilty or being investigated and rather than accept that, or go Google for confirmation, you just pretend it's outright not true.

What cases? Flash? That was answered and it was never a case. Is it so hard for you to understand that you don't get everything you want from a company's product. Ford doesn't have to user Bose radios if they don't want to use them. eBooks? That is still in trial meaning there is no verdict. The only thing I didn't answer was the UK pricing: The EU conducted an investigation as it required to when they receive a complaint. Apple was not found guilty as it never went to trial nor was Apple ever

There was very little alternative on the desktop when Microsoft was convicted. However Apple has a very strong competitor in both Android and Samsung. That's the difference.

Try reading the findings of fact and focus specifically on applications barrier to entry. Moving from iOS to Android is not nearly as difficult as moving from Windows to Linux or OS9 was in 2000.

Microsoft also deliberately, not once but three times, disrupted the development of middleware that would have made the migration easier. Now whether you think that any of the middleware (Netscape, Java and Intel's cross-platform device driver framework) was crap or not is irrelevant. Microsoft did this to prevent competitive threats from arising and to maintain their illegally gained market share.

Apple have tried to disrupt Android but have failed, and they have also not prevented software that allows cross-platform development. It's all in the findings of fact [justice.gov] which you clearly haven't read.

So buy an Android device that doesn't have those restrictions but has the same functionality. It's hard to be anti-competitive when you have several legitimate competitors. Microsoft had no legitimate competition, any pretense that OS9/OSX or Linux were a drop-in replacement for Windows was just laughable.

This might have been true in the past but it seems that Microsoft has taken it upon themselves to try and stay within standards more now. I think they are seeing a benefit now with multiple platforms where it's easier for developers to make software under 3rd party standards instead of what they dictate. Windows 7 and Windows 8 whether you like them or not are stable fast OS's. IE9-10 have been very standard compliant. Office 2013 runs so freaking quick on Windows 8 it's almost surprising.

Do you seriously expect everything to be given to you for free just because it's on the web? It's not a charity you know.

I seriously expect a site that bills itself as "news for nerds" to be savvy enough to link a story that its readers will be able to see without interference. Except Slashdot, this place is fucking incompetent.

Apple is living through this right now. First the iBook anti-trust, then the overseas tax hearings. More will come. Apple has historically had almost no lobbying presence in DC, just like Microsoft didn't in the mid 90s. They'd better push a few more million that way if they want to stay alive.